Brussels needs to rethink its copyright laws to cover digital books, two Eurocrats declared today.
The information society Commissioner, Viviane Reding, and the internal market and services Commissioner, Charlie McCreevy, issued a joint statement in which they called for a revision of copyright legislation that takes into …

COMMENTS

wrong move

"Bring it in line with the US"??? Given that the US has completely fucked over its copyright and patent systems, I'd rather Europe do it right rather than continue the slide back to the pre-1710 (Statute of Anne) situation of perpetual monopolies on content.

Be nice if the EU led us away from the cliff on this one, rather than blithely following the US on its quest to reinvent the London Company of Stationers.

Good news for consumers? Unlikely!

Great!

Less restrictive, so we can use orphaned works without serious criminal threats, ditch the 'database' right, which let companies claim rights to assemblies of works they don't have any copyrights in etc.

Basically undo the idiotic regime one Mr McCreevy put in place, and thank your lucky stars he failed in his attempt to introduce software patents in Europe! Otherwise this new bloke, Mr McCreevy would be demanding changes to patent system to permit software development in Europe, that the previous bloke, McCreevy killed with his software patents.

And can we finally get rid of that 'database' right? It didn't protect any database vendor from Google, it just made fewer databases in Europe!

"respecting copyright rules to ensure fair remuneration for authors"

Good idea. What about non-renewable five years and that's it?

What's that? The copyright holder hasn't gotten enough remuneration after five years? He wasn't paid up-front by a publisher for his work in the first place? He needs a license to print money, moving the externalities of enforcement and endless media control off to the taxpayer? Great idea, I'm sure.

I'm for it ....

Absolutely not

Given the US' greed on copyright, with their Sonny Bono Public Domain Destruction Act or whatever it's called, plus their "life of the author + next 120,000 generations of author's kids" mentality, the LAST thing Europe needs is to follow their example. What they should do is re-adopt the Statute of Anne, the original copyright law which gave authors plenty of time to profit from their works while still fuelling a healthy public domain.

Do what?

"turn over a new e-leaf"? Seriously? She said something that utterly inept? You know, after the whole roaming charges thing I was quite disposed to like Reding, but it's difficult to take anyone who comes out with nonsense like that seriously.

They can read??

Why on earth should the EU Parliament get their knickers in a twist over e-publishing copyright laws? Given their complete inability to understand the word "NO" (or 'Non', 'Nyet', Nein' or any other translation) when it is indicated on a ballot paper, why should they care?

The EU Parliament - ripping off European citizens since 1975... did they ever get their accounts signed off?

As usual the EU are miles behind

Where have these people been?? For the last five years if not more, Google and others have been digitising books, with permission, from libraries, including libraries in rhe EU.

As usual they are miles behind, they don't seem to have noticed that, in many subject areas, digital is the preferred format for distribution. In case they think that this development is a 'bad thing' they should ask historians, for example, if having access to older material in digital form is an improvement.

Follow my leader.

"The Commission is calling on Europe to adapt its copyright legislation to bring it in line with the US and its regulatory framework."

Why? Surely it's better to look at the problem at hand and work out the best way to solve it, rather than just implement the same solution as somebody else. Certainly it's worthwhile looking at other solutions. Pick the good bits, drop the bad bits. Learn from others' mistakes. Do not blindly copy.

Change

Surely it makes more sense to ask one single country (I'm looking at you: USA) to change, than for most of the rest of the civilised world, particularly since even the big guns say that the system in the USA is bonkers.